Letters

Riding out the perfect storm

I am delighted to see that Slocum features in your second, online, list. Among my own favourites are The Sea Is For Sailing by Peter Pye and Once is Enough by Miles Smeeton; very surprising omissions, if I may say so.

However, what really prompts me to write is the inclusion of The Perfect Storm. This book is hugely controversial, because of the way in which the writer portrays the skipper of the yacht Satori as being weak, effectively collapsing under the stress of the storm, retiring to his bunk as a comatose wreck, leaving his crew to run the ship. Some have argued this is a calumny verging on libel.

The boat concerned was a Westsail 32, descended from the Colin Archer Norwegian sailing pilot boats and rescue boats, via the American design team William and John Atkin, and they are legendary for surviving insanely bad conditions. The